his will be a relatively short post, as many of the topics surrounding traffic have been discussed in previous posts. But I wanted to dedicate a post to traffic on it’s own to touch on a few points that I haven’t already covered
Traffic is obviously an important part of making sales. No traffic means no sales. But take note – lots of traffic does not necessarily mean lots of sales. In my last post I discussed paying for advertising. One of the major advantages of this is that if done correctly it will get you more qualified leads
These are leads that are more likely to buy from you, as opposed to attracting anyone and everyone to your site and trying to play ‘the numbers game’ of sales. It’s the difference between having people visit your site who are looking to buy (or at least listen to) your beats and people who aren’t really interested in what you have to offer
Check out this argument for & against buying your reputation
Here’s where you should realise that Not All Traffic Is Equal. You may get 20,000 website visitors a month directly from social media marketing, and only 500 from PPC advertising. So which is more useful to you? This can only be answered when you look at the conversion numbers. Let’s imagine both sources bring in $2,000 a month in sales. That works out (as an average) as social media users being worth $0.10 each whereas the visitors coming from PPC ads are worth $4each. See the difference in types of traffic?
This is something you will need to analyse through your own analytics, as the figures and results will vary for everyone. If you don’t use Google Analytics, you should at the very lest be using the sales tracking feature for your myFlashstore beat stores. With this (or any analytics) you can establish which methods are working best for you, and where best to focus your efforts
Word Of Mouth
One thing I haven’t mentioned too often is the power of Word of Mouth. This is perhaps one of the most important aspects of marketing, as nothing will convince someone to visit your site and/or buy your beats like someone they trust telling them to
And you can directly influence this
The first and most obvious thing is make sure your beats are of a high quality. Everyone has different skill levels, but as long as you’re making the highest quality beats you can, you know you’ve left nothing to be desired
Next is your customer service. Nothing will inspire someone to talk about you (negatively) more than a bad customer experience. Think about how may times you’ve spread the word about a business for a positive reason, compared to doing the same for a negative reason. I imagine there were more negative examples, or at least, you were more passionate about retelling a negative experience. So you want to provide the best customer service you can (I touched on this in this blog)
Your after sales support needs to be just as good as your pre sales support. Yes you’ve already got their money, but if you want them to become an ambassador for your for brand, your interaction doesn’t end at the sale. A customer is much more likely to tell people about your service if you’re willing to do that little bit extra for them
Competitions are also a good way to get people to spread the word. One example would be to have artists submit completed tracks for a cash prize and have the public vote on it. These artists would be telling everyone they know to vote so they can win. This will not only increase visitors to your website/social networks, but will also mean your beats are heard by people you may never have reached!
Inbound Marketing
Recent times have seen a change in the way marketers operate, as they acclimatise to the rise of inbound marketing. Traditional marketing is based around finding and bringing in customers. Inbound marketing focuses on what you do to make customers find you
(Image from Hubspot. For a detailed breakdown of how this works, click here)
This includes your SEO, blog posts, social media efforts, etc. You’ve probably been implementing inbound marketing tactics without realising, as they happen so naturally. And that’s part of the reason inbound is so successful. People actively avoid advertising these days, with ad-blockers in place for 198 million people, they fast forward through adverts on TV and generally ignore as much incoming advertising as they can
So when they come across your website naturally, it doesn’t seem forced upon them so they are both more relaxed and likely to spend more time on your site
That’s it on getting traffic, remember to check out previous posts (below) as they have more detailed info on the specific areas involved in increasing traffic
Thanks for reading, see you next week!
Useful Links
http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/should-you-buy-or-build-your-online-reputation
Growing subscribers to increase traffic
http://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing
https://vtldesign.com/inbound-marketing/inbound-marketing-vs-outbound-marketing
